A heartfelt homecoming for Anthony Rizzo

A driving force in the Cubs’ 2016 championship season, Anthony Rizzo returned to Wrigley Field for the first time since being traded to the Yankees in 2021 for a Sept. 6 matchup with his old team.

Watching Anthony Rizzo’s rise to stardom in the Windy City was a Cubs fan’s dream come true. As the player and team reached unimagined heights together, America’s pastime became a religious experience in the home of deep-dish pizza and the friendly confines of Wrigley Field.

Being a lifelong devotee of the Chicago Cubs, I endured the multi-season heartbreak that reached a new low in 1969, when the New York Mets took an almost certain Cubs championship appearance and turned it into a black mark in the team’s history. The debacle made a then-7-year-old cry for days. For decades, the North Siders finished near the basement in the standings, with a couple of promising seasons in the mix.

My parents’ honeymoon was a Chicago Cubs game in August 1961, the year Roger Maris broke the Babe’s single-season home run record (kind of). The “Pizza Man,” Ron Santo, was our guy while I was growing up. No. 10 gave us thrills and chills along with multiple Gold Glove performances at third base and a steady stream of hits and homers at the plate. He loved the game like few others. That was until 2012, when another such player emerged at the other corner of the infield: Anthony Rizzo.

Santo retired in 1974, 15 years before Anthony Vincent Rizzo was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And it wasn’t until the proud Italian American joined the team that the “Santo Effect” returned for me.

The first baseman is a superstar athlete with an older brother who served as his athletic motivation growing up. “John is two years older than me, and he really set the bar,” Anthony told me in a recent face-to-face interview.

But it wasn’t always hits and home runs for him. As an 18-year-old member of the Boston Red Sox’s minor league team in 2008, Anthony was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. After six months of chemotherapy, he was told he was in remission. “It hit me and my family hard, but I wasn’t going to let it beat me,” Anthony said. “My family was with me all the way. I wouldn’t have made it without them.”

Anthony made it to the minors with the Red Sox in 2007, transitioning to the majors with the San Diego Padres in 2011. And then, at the start of a magical chain of events, he was traded to the Chicago Cubs in 2012. For the next few seasons, he became part of a team-building initiative that belongs in a baseball-franchise textbook. He was humble, sincere and lived for the game. Each season, he got stronger. He ultimately became a three-time All Star and a Platinum Glove and four-time Gold Glove winner as a Cub.

After a chance meeting with Mike Piazza at the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame, Anthony played for Team Italy in the 2013 World Baseball Classic. “I wasn’t good enough to play on the U.S. team, but I come from a very strong Italian background and to represent the whole country was a pretty cool experience,” he shared.

In 2016, a historic event shook the world of sports. Reminiscent of the 1985 Chicago Bears championship and almost every one of the “Jordan Years” for the Chicago Bulls, the Chicago Cubs dominated the season with a 103-58 record. With Rizzo leading a roster rich in personality and talent, the team won their first World Series in 108 years. The last one came before World War I, five years before Babe Ruth’s debut and just 15 years after Cracker Jack was introduced at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Throughout Anthony’s personal and professional journey, his parents, John, a lifetime ADT alarm company employee, and his mom, Laurie, a retired bartender, have been his twin Rocks of Gibraltar. Anthony’s grandparents came from Ciminna, Sicily, and he credits his time with them with giving him his true identity as an Italian American. “I have great memories of Sunday dinners,” Anthony explained. “I learned a lot at that dinner table.”

Although he was born in South Florida, his folks were from Lyndhurst, New Jersey. He spent many summers there with his cousins, to the point where he identified more as a Jersey native than a Floridian. “I still remember the lemon ice in Jersey,” he said. Today, the Italian ice shop he frequented has an “Anthony Rizzo” flavor.

In 2012, he established the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation, a nonprofit that benefits cancer research and supports families fighting the affliction. To this day, the foundation supports many children’s charities, including a place very near and dear to his heart, the Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “I try to get there as much as I can,” he said. “I love visiting the kids. It really brings me back, but it also makes me realize where I could have been.”

Anthony married a Cubs intern, Emily Vakos, in 2018. They adopted a dog two years later. His name is Kevin.

In 2021, he turned in his Chicago Cubs blue and donned Yankee pinstripes as he was traded to the perennial Big Apple powerhouse. “To live in a city like New York and to play in Yankee Stadium really is an incredible feeling, one I would wish every player experiences,” Anthony said. “I am on a team where you are expected to win daily, and that makes you work harder.”

It wasn’t until Sept. 6 of this year, three years since his departure from the Cubs and eight years since he caught the very last out of that Game 7 of the 2016 World Series win, that he stepped back onto Wrigley grass. “It was so emotional! It was me, my wife, Kevin, and so many friends and family all together, back to where it all began,” Anthony recounted. “The crowd was the loudest I have heard since we won in ’16. I got choked up as I walked into the outfield and saw those vines out there!”

Anthony Rizzo is a humble hero who helped bring pride to the team that means so much to the city of Chicago. In the process, he helped me experience what it must be like for my dad and Ron Santo up in heaven.

The above appears in the November 2024 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.